An Unexpected Reunion
by KellieKat
Summary: Emily and Tobias Fornell make an unexpected discovery at Gibbs' place.


"Uncle Gibbs!" Emily calls as she flings open the front door. "We brought dinner!"

Without waiting for a response, she and Tobias head in to make themselves comfortable – after all, it's Gibbs' house; if he doesn't want visitors, he can always lock his door.

Upstairs, Jethro is spreading sheets over a bed that hasn't seen use in many years. He tries to remember the last time he actually slept in a bed at least semi-regularly, decides it was probably sometime when Dr. Ryan was still around, and promptly stops trying to remember. He may be a lonely old bastard, but that doesn't mean he has to admit it to himself.

Tonight, though, someone will be sleeping in this bed. Not Gibbs, of course; Gibbs will be bunking in his usual spot on his perfectly good living room couch. He has out-of-town visitors, though, and he'll be damned if he doesn't pull out all the stops to make them feel comfortable (even if "all the stops" just means checking that the lightbulb isn't burned out and pulling a set of sheets out of the hall closet.)

"Uncle Gibbs?" Emily calls again, raising her voice a bit. Jethro thinks he hears someone puttering around downstairs, but he just figures his houseguests have finally gotten bored of just sitting around his living room.

Thoroughly undeterred by the silence that's answering her calls, Emily decides to head down to the basement, a pretty reliable place to find Jethro. "I'll check the kitchen," Tobias volunteers, taking the pizza box out of her hands and heading straight for the refrigerator where he happens to know Jethro keeps his favorite beer.

Emily rolls her eyes – her dad isn't actually helping look for Gibbs at all – but smiles as she heads down the stairs. "Gibbs!" she shouts. "Jethro!"

A quick survey of the basement tells her that no, he's not down here, either. _That's odd_, she finds herself thinking. After all, his pickup truck and the Dodger are both parked out front, but if he's not in the basement and he's not within earshot of the front door, that only leaves the mysterious world of Gibbs' Upstairs, a place she secretly thinks of as being something like the West Wing in the Beast's castle: unused, forbidden, and full of dust.

"Hey, Dad, I think maybe Gibbs is at work," she yells up the stairs. "I know his cars are here, but maybe Agent McGee picked him up or something." She's trying not to pout, but she's disappointed. She got back into town yesterday after being away for her freshman year of college, and she'd been looking forward to celebrating with her favorite old grumps.

At the top of the stairs, Emily turns to go look for Tobias, who apparently got too busy in the kitchen to respond to a word she's saying. _Seriously, what is up with everybody today?_

As she heads to go through the living room, though, her jaw drops open.

After a long moment of silence, a grin breaks across her face as she says, "Holy Fourth of July weenie roast!"

Now _that_, Jethro hears. He's just finished fluffing the last pillow – a skill Stephanie instilled in him long ago that he's rarely used since but has never forgotten – when the distinct sounds of a shocked teenager float up his stairs. Gibbs is smiling ear to ear as he takes the steps two at a time. He hadn't known the Fornells were coming, but at this rate he's thinking he better send out a group text and just get all his favorite people here together tonight.

Downstairs, Emily is nearly beside herself. "Tony!" she's yelling. "_Ziva!_"

The exhausted pair of former agents are both smiling as they sit up on Gibbs' couch and begin to disentangle themselves from one another's arms. "Hey, kid," DiNozzo says with a grin. Ziva yawns widely.

"Oh my God!" Emily laughs. "Is this – I mean are you - ?"

There are so many things she could be asking, so many things about this situation by which she is reasonably surprised – Ziva's alive, for starters; Tony's back stateside; Tony and Ziva are napping together in Gibbs' house on a Tuesday afternoon.

As Gibbs races down the stairs, he reaches the doorway of his living room just in time to hear DiNozzo laughing as Ziva says not-quite-seductively, "It is _exactly_ what it looks like."

A loud noise from the kitchen startles them all, and four sets of eyes – Emily's curious, Gibbs' mildly concerned, and Tony and Ziva's looking downright panicked all of a sudden – dart to the doorway.

"Jethro!" Fornell calls from around the corner, then comes into view with a shocked look on his face and a toddler held at arms' length, his elbows comically extended to keep her small body as far away from him as possible. "There's a child in your kitchen!"

Ziva smiles and visibly relaxes at the familiar face, and Tony laughs. "C'mon, Tobias!" he quips. "You don't recognize her?"

It's a good thing Gibbs walks over to take Tali out of Tobias' arms, because otherwise Fornell would surely drop her right onto the ground in shock.

"DiNozzo!" He cries. "David! What – what on earth are you two doing here?"

"Dad!" Emily elbows him hard. (That is absolutely no way to great your best friend's presumed-dead coworker and her baby daddy!)

Tobias pauses for a quick glare at his daughter – sometimes she is much too much like Diane – and then backtracks with a stunned but genuine smile. "I just mean, uh, y'know, Ziva we all saw the – " He glances over at Tali, playing happily on the ground with a set of wooden blocks that he is absolutely sure Gibbs made for her, and decides to go with a soft "pow" and a small hand motion instead of the word "explosion" – "And Tony, last I heard you were running off to Paris! But now you're here! You're all here! In DC! In Jethro's living room!" He pauses, then says under his breath, "We're gonna need another pizza."

Tony smiles and strokes his hand gently through Ziva's hair. (Tobias does not appreciate this display of affection and the awestruck look it's got fixed on Emily's face – she is at least ten years away from even considering romance, as far as he's concerned – but decides that now is not the time to complain.)

"Agent Fornell, a lot has happened over the past six years," Ziva says gently. Tony's hand moves to hers, and the way she smiles as he squeezes it reassuringly speaks volumes about what this family has been through.

"Ultimately," Tony says after a quiet moment, "We decided that we just didn't like the way Middle Eastern terrorists run their schools. The paperwork was a bitch, but we managed to get Tali enrolled in kindergarten here in the States, and we just couldn't see asking her to make that kind of commute."

"Tony!" Ziva chastises, but she's smiling, so her admonishment lacks any real bite. Emily snickers, then turns her attention to Tali. Gibbs smirks. Fornell just blinks. Several times.

"It's not Agent Fornell anymore," he finally informs them when he can't think of anything else to say. "FBI finally had enough of me, so I'm a PI now."

"You are not!" Tony looks positively delighted at this news. _FBI agents are pretty okay_, he supposes, _but private investigators are the coolest of the cool!_

Ziva leans back dramatically into the couch with a much put-upon sigh. "Please, Tobias," she begs, "Do not give him any ideas!"

Fornell fixes a stern look on his face. "Yes, ma'am," he agrees seriously, then winks conspiratorially at an apparently still shell-shocked DiNozzo.

"Ima," Tali says suddenly, and all other conversation is completely forgotten by mutual unspoken understanding that her needs come first. _Like a much happier Rule 44,_ Tobias muses silently.

"Yes, Tali," Ziva responds, smiling gently but honestly a little overwhelmed at the way everyone seems to be watching her interaction with her child. She is hyperaware of the fact that both Tobias and Jethro have more experience raising daughters than she does, and even after all these years, she can't help hoping to win Gibbs' approval.

"I'm _hungry_!" Tali exclaims, and the room breaks into quiet laughter, as if everyone is breathing a sigh of relief that she didn't say something like, "I want to go home," or "I don't like these strangers."

"Well, by all means, Tali, let's get you some food!" Jethro declares. "What would you like to have?"

Tali thinks very hard for a moment as if this is the most important decision she's ever made, and Emily grins when it occurs to her that it might really be. _Kids are so lucky_.

"I would like pizza, please," she concludes. Tobias is taken slightly aback by her manners. Either Tony and Ziva are doing something very right, or he and Diane did something very wrong.

"I actually just put a box in the kitchen when I got here," Fornell offers, more to Gibbs than to anyone else. "It's mushroom – Emily's favorite." He and Tony pull faces at the idea of pizza with any topping that isn't meat, and Emily and Ziva roll their eyes.

"How 'bout it, Tali," Gibbs asks, leaning down to look the child in the eyes. "You like mushrooms?"

He fully expects to be letting her in on the secret that they can take them off and give their extras to Emily and Ziva, but Tali grins a toothy grin and exclaims, "Mushrooms are my fav-orte!"

(_Those manners _and _she likes mushrooms? Yeah, Diane and me were _not _that good.) _

"Fav-or-ite, Tali," Tony says gently, finally standing up from the couch and then offering his hand to help Ziva up, too.

"Fav-or-ite," Tali repeats back, putting special emphasis on every syllable.

Tony smiles. "Good job!"

As everyone starts moving towards the kitchen, Emily jumps into action. "I'll get the plates!" She offers.

Tobias heads towards the counter to start dishing up the pizza, and Ziva takes Tali down the hall to wash her hands before dinner. Tony, meanwhile, hangs back for a hushed conversation with Gibbs.

"Thanks again for putting us up, boss," he says earnestly. "It means a lot."

Gibbs puts a hand on DiNozzo's shoulder. "You're family, Tony," he says seriously. "You need a place to stay, you got one here as long as I'm here."

On impulse, Tony wraps Jethro in a hug, trying like hell to keep at bay the tears that are threatening to give away just how much he's feeling right now.

"Hey, Tony," Gibbs offers as he pulls away. "If the Fornells are gonna be here, what do you say we call the McGees, too, let them know you guys are in town? I bet they could bring more food, Tim could get you some pepperoni – " Tony grins widely at that – "And you and Ziva could finally meet the kiddos."

That sounds just about perfect to Tony, so he turns around to look for Ziva so he can make sure she's on board. He needn't look long, though; she must've finished washing up with Tali and come to find him, because she's standing just behind him, her smile more relaxed than he's seen in years. "I would like very much to finally meet this Mrs. McGee," she says with a grin – it gives both Tony and Gibbs pause for a moment to realize that Ziva and Delilah's paths never quite managed to cross – then adds, "And I need a McBaby in each arm as soon as possible."

Tony laughs and wraps an arm around the woman he loves. In the kitchen, Tobias watches happily as Emily and Tali discuss their mutual love of mushrooms on pizza. With a huge smile, Gibbs reaches for his phone.


End file.
